While listening to this morning’s audio I felt both my destination and it’s origins. I saw in my mind’s eye a seed pod sprouting out of the ground. Well watered, bathed in sunshine, the rich earth below it tended lovingly by beneficial worms. I experienced the sunshine playing on the shore of a beautiful beach, the sound of the waves, the pod now a great and giving tree hanging with fruit, dolphins playing and beckoning in the bay beyond it. I felt the spray of fresh sea air. I felt at home.

I was rather excited to participate in today’s experiment. A break from facing into the wind of what needed to be done in light of my impending website opening. I doodled my seed pod first. My thoughts soon began to stray. I lamented the fact that I was faced with limited time, had grabbed my daughter’s favorite pen set not my own (hey it was dark at 5am) and had a full day ahead. But that was okay. Ish.

I had realized quite a long time ago that when I engage in artistic endeavors I don’t just sit down and say “I am going to draw an elephant”. I will walk past a piece of paper, see an elephant on the paper, suddenly really want to draw an elephant, sit down and start drawing it. The elephant has to be there in the first place. And I can’t tell you how many times I have started out with the best of intentions to draw an elephant and wound up with a nice giraffe. The giraffe was there, the elephant was not and that was that.

When I went to capture the scene from my mind of the “destination” I looked down at the paper and it was just a piece of paper. I grabbed a pen anyway because I was “supposed to”. Uh, oh. Now I was embarking on a fool’s errand. I know I can force a creation out of thin air and everyone seems pleased enough. But to me it is like making orange juice out of an already squeezed orange. It’s hard to do, not much comes out of it and it’s neither satisfying nor worth the time and trouble.

So after a bit of wrestling with my thoughts I came to my senses and drew just for me, for the enjoyment of it and let all the remaining head chatter die a natural death (“… you committed to showing up each day and following through without hesitation, etc., blah, blah, blah…”), turned around and went back to assisting my seed pod to make it’s way out into the world.

Hugs, ~ M